I recently installed Linux Mandrake 8.0 and during installation, I installed all available packages as I have a large hard disk. Now, in X windows, a few of the installed games, such as Tuxracer, among others don't work. When I click them, their name appears on the bottom taskbar where it shows what's running, but they don't run. Most games run, but some don't. How come?

Any ideas?

Try running them from a terminal window. Not sure why they wouldn't run, I usually tend not to run those games or never installed them. You can always try to reinstall them off the disks.

I actually have the same problem
whenever i run one of those it just pops up on the bar for a couple seconds then disappears
very frustrating

That's exactly what happens to me, except not for all the games. Two of my friends also have that same problem. Does anyone have any ideas as to what might possibly cause it? Any help would be greatly appreciated, as I know a few people who have the same problem. Even my school had a very similar problem with Linux. As far as I know, however, it was not fixed.

well, tuxracer is an open gl program, and a lot of times the open gl isn't installed correctly. this COULD be the problem, but it could also be a lot of other things. what other programs don't work?

One good way to resolve these kind of problems is by opening a xterm (or any term for that matter) and start the game from that terminal. That way, you see what's going wrong when you start the game, and we can have a better idea to what's going on....

Whenever I start the games that don't work from the xterm window, it displays something like:

XGL not found on display :0

something like that, at least

I have the same problem, I was able to run them with my Voodoo3 un Mandrake 7.2 I'm pretty sure. Then it died and I was left with a 4mb Rage IIC card, some of those games were on both ditros. I always attributed the games dying to the fact that my card sucked.

These problems sound like a problem with your XFree86 configuration file. Take a look at /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file and make sure that you're doing 2 things:

1.) Loading the "glx" module

2.) Using a video driver that actually supports GL. There are generic drivers and company drivers. For example, the generic GeForce driver is much slower that the official driver from NVidia. The driver is loaded in the section that defines your video card in the format:

Section "Device"

Identifier "blah"
Driver "driver_name"
Vendorname "blah"
Boardname "blah"

EndSection

If possible, use the driver that the hardware company provides where it says "driver_name"

I have an ATI Mach 64 video card. What hardware driver are you talking about? Can you be a little clearer? My Linux computer is presently non-functional, but I hope to have it fixed within a few days. Something shorted out.

Where it says "driver_name" in my previous post, it should say something like "mach64". I'll check my laptop on Monday (it's in the office) for the exact setting.

no, the ATI Mach 64 driver is simply "ati". the only other setting for ATI is "r128" and you won't get X working at all with that setting.

i've been spending months on getting it to work and it hasn't worked for me; accelerated graphics are not supported yet for the mach64 cards. check dri.sourceforge.net for more information (and try to nudge them for some functionality).

I have had the same problem and the only solution is to turn on autologin.

Really? That sounds strange. Why would autologin have anything to do with that?